Settling In

Monday, 17 September 2012

So tonight, after two long days of adjustment, I thought it would be a great idea to lie on my mat, outside on my back patio and just look at the stars and relax. And it was really beautiful. Then I saw a bat fly into my house. I didn’t know what to do, so I just pointed my flashlight inside to see where it went. I watched it fly into my bedroom, then across the hall to the other room. Then it flew back outside. Thank goodness. Crisis. Averted. And I learned an important lesson, which is DON’T LEAVE YOUR DOOR OPEN AT NIGHT! Although, hopefully I will soon have screen door to solve this problem.

So the past two days have just been figuring out what to do here. Sunday, Hubert had a whole army of people come to work on my house. By that, I mean an electrician to fix my light and light switch, a mason to finish my latrine (which apparently was supposed to be done a week ago, but of course was not), a carpenter to make a frame for my window screens, two boys to bring me containers of water then sweep my house, and a solder to weld the chain for my hammock to something that the mason then cemented into my walls on my back patio. Of course, for me the hammock is the most exciting part. But I have to wait TWO WHOLE DAYS before I can sit in it. I keep touching the cement and thinking, “Well this feels like it’s ready.” And I have to keep reminding myself that I am not a mason, so I should listen to someone who is, and that if I try to use it now, and it ruins the work that was done, I will have to shamefully call the mason back, pay him more money, and wait another two days after that.

Sunday afternoon a guy, my age, named Landry, (and yes, that’s pronounced like you’re washing your dirty clothes) that works for Hubert, plus his brother, Ezekiel, escorted Maria and I to the market. They took us around and bargained for everything that we needed. Then they took us around to different shops for various items. It was a long day with a lot of walking, and I’m sure they were exhausted at the end. But now I have pretty much everything I need to clean my house and cook my food, which are the important things. I still have no furniture, although these boys did find a table that they brought me so I could but my stove, etc on it. My stove is basically just three burners on a metal seat, which you attach to gas via a hose. Oh, and apparently there are supposed to be some sort of “belt” things which tighten where the gas is attached. The Peace Corps forgot to give those to us, but they were like, “Oh, it’s okay if you don’t use them… but we’ll send them up as soon as possible!”

It’s really weird to start absolutely from scratch in a house. I’m used to, at the very least, already having things like a stove, oven and countertops. Oh, and that ever important thing called WATER. And POTABLE WATER at that. Luckily, I brought a bunch of already prepared water in bottles with me, which lasted until I could get my stove set up to boil more. I also didn’t even have a place to sit. Since freshman year of college, I’ve always had my huge round chair that I take with me, so at least I have something to sit in (except, of course, when I studied abroad, but that was always living with a family, so I had furnishings). But here: nothing. Just floors, a wall, and half a ceiling.

the front of my house

my front room

my extra room
(I'm using it for storage)

my kitchen

my back porch
WITH MY HAMMOCK!

my bedroom

the view from the back of my house

These few days of unpacking, I’ve realized that I have a (cultural?) dependency on shelves, or at the very least raised surfaces. I, of course, don’t have shelves yet, but I’m trying to put things away. And even though I’ve put stuff, by category, it doesn’t feel right. For example, my extra room I am using for a closet/storage So I put up a rope attached to the already existing nails as my clothes rack (although I have only 6 hangers, so I’m using binder clips as “clothes pins-ish” to hang stuff up. Is that weird?). But on the floor, I have a row of shoes, then plastic box I brought from home with hair/makeup supplies, another plastic box with office-esque supplies, a suitcase for my “delicates”, another suitcase for clothes that don’t need hung up like t-shirts, etc. But I keep having this urge for shelves. To me even a table or desk cluttered with this stuff in the exact same pattern would be more organized. I don’t know why this is, except for the fact, that of course I’ve had access to desks, tables, closets with shelves, drawers, and countertops in the kitchen, etc. ALL OF WHICH I kept in disarray, but they still felt better than my ordered floor. I think this is the point you realize you have mental problems that are beyond fixing. (To be fair, though, I always START by strictly organizing my new residence, it just never stays that way for long.)

I want a Target. I want to be able to go there and by cheap, crummy shelving for 2 dollars, and put it up myself (sidenote, all of these walls are concrete. Clearly people have put nails in them before, but I don’t get it. Do I need special nails?). I want to not have to bargain for a better price. I want to know exactly where to find everything, where IT’S LABELED by category, not a haphazard market. I want craigslist so I can find someone selling a stupid couch or double mattress for cheap. I want Amazon so I can order things I need, without having to talk to anyone at all, and have them arrive in a few days, no extra charge. (Having Amazon Prime was the best thing EVER, and for me as a student it was free for a year. But one time I ordered a flash drive at 2 PM and it was at my house by 10 the next morning. Beautiful.) AHHHH I’m so addicted to this consumer lifestyle. And it’s kind of infiltrating the big cities of Africa. For example, in Porto Novo, there were people that would walk around selling various items. Want DVDs? Just sit in a bar until someone selling illegal copies walked by. Same went for shirts, fake “brand name” sunglasses (want some “Ray Pins”?), CDs, belts, even flyswatters, and perfume, the list goes on.

If nothing else, these next two years will teach me patience. I already have quite a bit of it. But I’m hoping to get away from the culture of “Now, now, now.” Since I have an internet key, it’s hard to stay away for A WHOLE DAY, even though in Porto Novo, I might have gone on for a week without it. (Although once I start working more, I will hopefully have less time to think about it). The culture of Africa is more about building relationships, and not about efficiency of accomplishing tasks. This will of course be frustrating, but I also hope to learn a lot from this experience.

Today I also went into town to try to start my work, etc. Hubert was super busy, as usual. He is always trying to do everything for everyone. I got breakfast on my own, then headed over to the office. Landry was there, so I talked to him for a bit. Then I went to Edward’s shop—he is the current president of the Artisans Savings & Loans Group or “Ben Club”. He was really happy to see me. I just went to say hi, that I am back, and that I’d be going to the meeting on Friday. I mentioned that I’d looked over the bylaws material that they wanted to do, so maybe we could discuss it at that meeting or the next. I didn’t remember where many other of the artisan’s shops were, though. I passed one on my walk home, and they called me over and were like, “When did you arrive, and why haven’t you come by to say hi???” So I explained that I just got here, I’ve been working on my house and was planning on coming to the meetings of the artisans on Friday and Saturday to greet everyone, and not to worry, I hadn’t forgotten about them. I hope this was sufficient. Other than my shyness, I think one of the hardest parts about all of this greeting thing, is that I was introduced to so many people on my visit (and that was a month ago). There is no way I can remember all of their names, where their shops are, etc, etc. I am only one person to remember for them, but I have to learn the whole town. Or at least part of it. I hope I don’t offend to many people by not going to see them or remembering their names.

So I’ve kind of had this idea that it would be really awesome to have my own desk in Hubert’s building. That way, I could come into town to work, such as if I’m typing up the by-laws or writing a grant, or doing any other sit-down work that I’ve been given. Plus people would know where to find me, or where to leave something for me. And actually, Hubert later mentioned, “I think we should get you a desk, and we’ll put it up here and put a “Corps de la Paix” sign over it.” Thank you, again, for being the perfect homologue, Hubert. You know exactly what I need.

Anyway, I was looking around Hubert’s office. It is set up so you walk in the front entrance and to the left there is a room. In this room, there are a lot of seed, fertilizers, etc, that are for the women gardening groups to buy when they need them. Landry works in this room, and mostly just sits around all day, just in case someone comes by. (Although he is also working right now on filling out survey sheets on every single gardener in the gardening groups of Kérou. This is quite a grand and tedious task!) Past this room, there is another opening into a large, open room. To the left is Hubert’s cluttered and overflowing desk. To the right is just a pile of random things, like watering cans, boots, water pumps, and stand-alone billboards that are apparently used when the mayor has announcements for the town. Then, past these things, towards the front of the building is another small room. This is filled with hospital beds and trash. Apparently the hospital beds, like many of the things in the aforementioned “pile” were bought by the mayor to distribute to the people of Kérou—in this case, specifically for the Health Center. But they are just sitting in this room, collecting dust and rat droppings, and the room has kind of turned into a trash pile, where people throw bottles or documents with which they can’t figure out something to do. So I think I’m going to work on getting all of these things cleaned up and distributed. It’s great that the mayor buys these things, but they are currently doing no one any good. Hubert mentioned that some of the beds need repaired, which may cost some money. That might be a little harder. Another problem with the supplies, like the boots, for instance is that there are some that the mayor bought, but maybe only 20 or so. Yet there are hundreds of women in the gardening groups of Kérou, so they don’t go far. I’ve been thinking that maybe, instead of giving them away for free, the mayor could just give a reduced price to the women who are in the official gardening groups. This would allow the money that the mayor’s office has to buy the supplies stretch further, since they would only be spending a little bit on each boot, rather than paying for the whole thing. Plus this could work to address another problem the women in Fétékou mentioned. It was that they had a hard time forcing all of the women to pay dues. But if there are specific perks to being a member, such as receiving reduced prices at the shop in Kérou, and these perks are taken away if you don’t pay your dues, this might be an incentive to pay up.

The point is I already have some ideas for small tasks. Cleaning up and organizing—and hopefully distributing—these piles of stuff isn’t a huge undertaking, but it’s a step towards more efficiency, the products getting to people who want to use them, and so on. It will help me feel like I’m actually doing something other than just wandering around. And it will give me space for by own little bureau!

So I was just poking around this area during the day, and discussed it with Hubert later when he returned. I also discussed with him needing to meet more of the gardening groups. I was supposed to meet them when I was here a month ago, but it got rained out. He is really busy this week, especially since he is preparing for a meeting of the commune (aka county)-wide association of the gardening groups this Thursday. I think this is for elections of officers, etc. I will go to this, but just to show my face and perhaps meet some people. Then starting next week, Hubert will organize for me to go to the various nearby villages.

Also, I mentioned that Hubert had technically requested an additional volunteer for Fétékou—which has a huge gardening group—but they just gave me both the Kérou and Fétékou assignment. As such, I thought it would be a good idea to perhaps attend their weekly meetings, which I found out are on Sundays. I talked to Hubert about the language barrier—he says no one in Fétékou knows how to speak French, so he will have to organize my trips with someone to translate. Hubert was very, very happy that I wanted to do this. He then said something like, “Yes, this would be good. We Africans are like—and excuse the metaphor—but we’re like a bike. If you stop peddling, we stop moving forward.” I think he hopes that having an American attending the meetings will generate a lot of excitement and increased attendance to the meeting. I can work with them for the two years, and hopefully after this time, they will be accustomed enough to attending, participating, etc, (I will have pedaled hard enough to give it some momentum) that it will continue after I leave.

We also talked about the “Maison des Maraichers”, which is Hubert’s idea of creating a shop in Kérou to sell veggies every day of the week. I told him I still thought it was a wonderful idea, but the Peace Corps doesn’t allow you to submit grant requests for the first three months (this is to keep communities from viewing volunteers as cash cows only). But I also said that I hoped over the next three months I could work on getting the information I needed to write the grant (luckily, I took a grant-writing class last year). Plus there are specific things the Peace Corps looks for, like the community contributing—at a minimum—25% of the cost. They also want to see involvement of a large part of the community (not just Hubert!), and so on. So I want to be able to, when I submit this grant, show that I have all of these things already in place and worked out. So I hope he is encouraged by this. When he has more free time, I also want to sit down and talk with him about specifics, etc.

So I have lots to do, even over the next three months! I am kind of worried, because Peace Corps volunteers/staff keep warning against jumping right into things. You need to sit back, observe, talk to people, find out the real needs of the community, etc. Partially this is because perhaps people will just say things that they want, but maybe it won’t really be good for the community. Also, if you undertake a huge project early on, but then in fails in a huge way, the community will always remember this, and it will be hard to do anything else because they won’t trust you to be successful.

This is why I am really content with the small tasks, like writing bylaws, or organizing the pile in Hubert’s office, because this gives me a chance to do something productive, interact with people (like the artisans and the women to whom I distribute the gardening supplies), but it’s not like I’m taking on huge responsibilities. But on the other hand, I have a huge confidence in Hubert, he knows people, he knows Kérou, and he’s so motivated and energetic. So I don’t think that jumping into this project of his—which I think is quite wonderful—is necessarily a bad idea. I also want to work with Anna, who has been in the Kérou area (technically 10 km south of the town, in another village) for the past year. Plus she is the regional coordinator for the Food Security Committee (or something like that). So it’s really perfect.

Saturday, 22 September 2012

This morning, I was awakened by a magnificent thunderstorm. My roof is made out of tin, so the rain really pounds away. It is quite a delightful way to be woken up, just listening to the sounds of nature.

Rain here, though, affects me so much more than at home. It means you don’t want to go out, because your only options are walking, biking, or taking a moto, none of which protect you from the elements. Plus the unpaved roads are terrible and hard to navigate. The rain should stop at the end of this month, though. I am looking forward to the dry season, just so as to not be inconvenienced, although I am not exactly looking forward to the “cold” period of the dry season (when it gets all the way down to 50 degrees!) nor the “hot” period when it reaches temperatures of 120 or more. But hey, at least the roads won’t be as bad.

This week has been kind of unproductive. I mean, I did get my stuff unpacked and organized (ish). And I finally got to sit in my hammock, which was wonderful. I also have been cooking for myself, which is absolutely fabulous. I mean, it’s not like I’m making gourmet meals, and I don’t think anyone else in the world would be tempted by my concoctions. (For example, last night my dinner was mashed (without milk or butter, mind you) African yams—which are HUGE, by the way—mixed with onions, tomatoes, and tuna, plus spices.) I thought it was delicious. And so much better than the plain rice and beans or rice and fish I always got in Porto Novo. But most of you are probably sitting there wondering why I think that’s appealing, and I’m not really sure. Maybe it was just the fact that I prepared it myself.

The view of the Sunset from the back of my house

The meeting for the gardening groups got cancelled because someone important was stuck in Parakou, then the artisan meetings weren’t that full because they have exams for their apprentices this weekend. I do have a meeting scheduled to go over the by-laws though, on Monday. I feel weird sitting around a lot. I need to go out and make friends, although it’s just SO HARD to know where to start. And it’s just so, so easy and tempting to be bored and just go hang out with the other volunteers here, which I’ve been doing a little too much. This is the crucial integration time, and we keep being warned that if we just sit in our houses, and/or spend time with Americans, the people here will lose interest and us, and figure that we won’t be much use. So I have started coming up with plans for various days so I can make a conscious effort to get myself out there. Oh, and all of these plans terrify me (you mean I have to actually go and talk to people!?) but I will do it.

Also, one of my challenges is that I am used to walking around with my eyes facing down and my head in the clouds. When I walk somewhere, I’m always daydreaming or thinking about something. I’m never looking around. This means that a lot of times, I could pass right by a friend without noticing. In Bariba-land (Bariba is the dominant ethnic group here, if you recall), this is completely unacceptable. Salutations are of utmost importance, and to pass someone you know on the street without saying hi is very offensive. If someone calls me out on it later, I just explain that in the States people don’t always say hi on the streets (I know, not entirely true), which will only get me so far. I really need to work on keeping my head up and paying attention to what’s going on around me during my walks.

I did accomplish one thing, which was getting the area in Hubert’s office cleaned up and organized. Well, not the very back room with the hospital beds, but the front area with the gardening supplies. Now it looks pretty, everything is more accessible. Now we just have to get them distributed. Hubert wasn’t working on it when I was there, it was just me and Landry. I kept asking what we could do with the trash, and he kept saying, “Oh we have to wait for Hubert to get back, and ask him.”

One of my parent’s constant complaints about employees (with certain exceptions, of course) was their general unwillingness to take initiative. My parents always struggled against the employee’s need to constantly go to my parents—the bosses—to seek approval for something. My parents tried to encourage an atmosphere of, “If it needs done, DO IT!” Once you’ve worked at a place for a bit—and provided you have the ability to think critically—you can figure out if something needs done. Of course, it’s unwise to run around doing whatever you want, bosses are there to give some direction, but you don’t need there permission just to take on a tiny project that would, for instance, make the office more efficient, and that that boss would probably approve of anyway.

So anyway, this predisposition that my parents have ingrained into my head, led to a constant back-and-forth with Landry. “Let’s throw this away!” “No, we need to ask Hubert first.” Then I would respond (and by the way, my Mom is going to explode with pride and a feeling of a job well done when she reads this), “Landry. How long ago were these papers thrown into this room? Years ago? If no one has used them for years, then NO ONE IS GOING TO USE THEM! They need to go.” Landry just laughed at me like I was crazy, but away the papers went into the trash. But he refused to actually burn them until we got the okay from Hubert. (Oh, because things like trash dumps and recycling plants don’t actually exist within this country, but that’s a whole other issue.) I don’t feel guilty at all about tossing these things though (other than the inability to recycle). Some of the papers were receipts of the mayors office from 1985. The most recent papers were from 2000. No one needs them any more.

So little by little things are coming along. I just need to put myself out there more, but I think this will come as I get to know some people better, and hopefully this will enable me to expand my circle of acquaintances and people with whom I can work.